The present disclosure relates to RF signal processing for wireless communication, and more particularly to a phase array receiver.
In the field of wireless communication, a receiving device may be implemented so as to receive a signal for a particular direction and not to receive a signal for an undesired direction. Beamforming techniques using a phase array receiver are emerging to ensure the accuracy, reliability, and efficiency of such signal reception. The beam forming techniques refer to techniques of processing transmission signals or reception signals so that the energy radiated from an antenna is concentrated in a specific direction.
A phase array receiver for beamforming may be implemented in various structures. For example, a phase array receiver may be implemented with a radio frequency (RF) beam forming structure, a local oscillator (LO) beam forming structure, a baseband analog beam forming structure, and a digital beam forming structure. Among them, the RF beam forming structure is a structure that performs phase shifting and RF signal combining before a frequency mixer. Such an RF beam forming structure requires a small number of components and has an advantage in that the routing is simple. In addition, the RF beam forming structure has the advantage of spatially filtering an interference signal in an RF reception path before mixing RF frequencies.
Various demands are raised to improve the performance of a phase array receiver in an RF beam forming structure. In recent years, there is a demand for a phase array receiver that has a simple structure and improves the linearity.